FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1998 Public Information Office CB98-207 301-457-3030/301-457-3670 (fax) 301-457-4067 (TDD) e-mail: pio@census.gov Robert W. Marx 301-457-2131 e-mail: rmarx@geo.census.gov Don Muff First Data Solutions 515-382-8391 Census Bureau, First Data Solutions Announce Partnership The Commerce Department's Census Bureau announced that it has entered into a public/private collaboration with First Data Solutions of Chicago, Ill., to determine the feasibility of improving, on a continuing basis, the inventory of addresses in the Census Bureau's Master Address File and developing systematic approaches to the general maintenance of geographic and address-level files used to support the Census Bureau's demographic data collection programs. This Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), signed earlier this year, continues a new era of partnership between the Census Bureau and the private sector. The Census Bureau signed its first CRADA with Geographic Data Technology (GDT) in November 1996; its second with Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI) in March 1997; and another with GeoResearch, Inc. in March 1998. First Data Solutions (formerly First Data InfoSource/Donnelly Marketing, Inc.) provided the Census Bureau with the initial residential address list used to take the 1970 census the first mailout/mailback census. For more information about First Data, please visit the company on the Internet at<www.firstdatacorp.com>.-X-The U.S. Census Bureau, pre-eminent collector and disseminator of timely, relevant and quality data about the people and the economy of the United States, conducts a population and housing census every 10 years, an economic census every five years and more than 100 demographic and economic surveys every year, all of them evolving from the first census in 1790.
